Blizzard has posted a message in response to the perception that recent reports of account hacking in Diablo III represent an uptick in such incidents. They say the number of compromised accounts does not represent anything unusual for their games, and that they continue to recommend the use of the Battle.net Authenticator or the Battle.net Mobile Authenticator for best security of your Battle.net account:

We'd like to take a moment to address the recent reports that suggested that Battle.net® and Diablo® III may have been compromised. Historically, the release of a new game -- such as a World of Warcraft® expansion -- will result in an increase in reports of individual account compromises, and that's exactly what we're seeing now with Diablo III. We know how frustrating it can be to become the victim of account theft, and as always, we're dedicated to doing everything we can to help our players keep their Battle.net accounts safe -- and we appreciate everyone who's doing their part to help protect their accounts as well. You can read about ways to help keep your account secure, along with some of the internal and external measures we have in place to help us achieve our security goals, at our account security website here: www.battle.net/security.

We also wanted to reassure you that the Battle.net Authenticator and Battle.net Mobile Authenticator (a free app for iPhone and Android devices) continue to be some of the most effective measures we offer to help players protect themselves against account compromises, and we encourage everyone to take advantage of them. In addition, we also recently introduced a new service called Battle.net SMS Protect, which allows you to use your text-enabled cell phone to unlock a locked Battle.net account, recover your account name, approve a password reset, or remove a lost Authenticator. Optionally, you can set up the Battle.net SMS Protect system to send you a text message whenever unusual activity is detected on your account, keeping you aware of important (and possibly unwanted) changes.

We also have other measures built into Battle.net to help protect players. Occasionally, when Battle.net detects unusual login activity that differs from your normal behavior -- such as logging in from an unfamiliar location -- we may prompt you for additional information (such as the answer to one of your security questions) and/or require you to perform a password reset through the Battle.net website. World of Warcraft players might be familiar with this security method already, and Diablo III players may begin to encounter it as well.

eunichron wrote on May 22, 2012, 22:43:So, either people who claim they've been hacked with an authenticator are lying (You think people would do that? Just go on the internet and tell lies?), or they just didn't bother to formally report it, giving Blizzard no information to work with.

There's a blue post I'll see if I can find it, but the only case of the an account being hacked with authenticator on it relating to D3, is when the authenticator was added after the account was hacked.

--"For every human problem, there is a neat, simple solution; and it is always wrong." --H.L. Mencken

Kitkoan wrote on May 22, 2012, 22:16:The app versions are free. Not sure about the SMS thing though. I'm not defending Blizzard here, but their knee jerk answer is free.

App version is free, sms version is free, and if you get hacked they give you an authenticator. Can't quite figure out the problem here for some people.

On top of that there's this;

We've been taking the situation extremely seriously from the start, and have done everything possible to verify how and in what circumstances these compromises are occurring. Despite the claims and theories being made, we have yet to find any situations in which a person's account was not compromised through traditional means of someone else logging into their account through the use of their password. While the authenticator isn't a 100% guarantee of account security, we have yet to investigate a compromise report in which an authenticator was attached beforehand.

So, either people who claim they've been hacked with an authenticator are lying (You think people would do that? Just go on the internet and tell lies?), or they just didn't bother to formally report it, giving Blizzard no information to work with.

Totally anecdotal, but I've used an authenticator for my Battle.net account since they first became available for WoW, switched to a mobile authenticator when I got a smartphone, and my WoW/Battle.net account has never been 'hacked', nor do I know anyone with an authenticator that has been. These people are being phished plain and simple.

Last night, I couldn't play their damn single player game because Battle.net was down for 8 hours! One more time, and I'm shelving Diablo3... I'm itching to play Max Payne 3 and Ghost Recon: Future Soldier anyway.

In short, its your fault if our security is broken, thanks for the money.

Not to mention, they totally dodged the issue. So, what happened with this? A lot of accounts got hacked, why? Your security at fault or the users security at fault? What steps are being taken to prevent further problems? Are their steps being taken? Is it being looked into? Or are you just going to point at the Authenticator and hope the problem goes away?